American racism traps Blacks — even in Africa. Prof. Dennis chronicles the compulsive and repetitious nature of racism and its destructive effects on peoples and societies, Dr. Dennis’s observations of the twists of irony and misplaced pride on all sides will provoke a wry smile a well as dismay.

During the 1990s, Liberia descended into civil war and anarchy. African-Liberian rebel groups roamed the countryside randomly killing as they vied for power. Doe was killed by a segment of these rebel groups and warlord Charles Taylor eventually became president in 1997. In 2003, Taylor was deposed by rebel groups and is now on trial at The Hague for war crimes. Despite Ellen Johnson-SirleafÂ’s democratic election in 2005, Liberia remains in ruins as a classic failed state in Africa. The obvious question is: Why did the Negro experiment planted in Africa in 1822 fail so miserably?

A true African-American, Dr. Dennis writes from a broad historical and social perspective having lived in an African tribe, as a "Negro" in the 1950s and since the Civil Rights Movement as a "black man in America," having moved in international diplomatic circles and having worked as a member of the American academic elite.

About the Author

A professor of sociology and anthropology, Dr. Dennis is conversant with the dominant and the subordinate groups in both Liberia and the United States.

As the son of a Liberian diplomat, Prof. Dennis spent his school years at the Liberian consulate in Berlin and was accepted among white boys of his age. He spent his summers in Liberia — both in Monrovia and in his father’s Mende village of Vahun and his mother’s Gbande village of Somalahun. Dr. Dennis went on to earn a double PhD in Sociology and Anthropology from Michigan State University in 1963. This varied exposure gave him a cosmopolitan worldview that, along with his education, enables him to analyze the highly-charged issues of racism, discrimination and hypocrisy with humor, grace and understanding.

A hereditary chief of the Mende tribe, Dr. Dennis has resided in the United States since 1950, where he has mixed in black communities and white communities. His wife Anita K. Dennis has a BA in Sociology with a minor in anthropology and has been accepted into her husband’s Mende tribe. She was instrumental in enabling Dr. Dennis to complete this work.

About the Book

Slaves to Racism is a unique cross-racial, cross cultural approach to racism from an insider/outsider viewpoint.

Slaves to Racism is a unique cross-racial, cross cultural approach to racism from an insider/outsider viewpoint.

Using numerous personal stories from the 1950s to today, from the American South and Midwest to Western Africa, the author displays the compulsive and repetitive nature of racism, its effect on both participant and victim, and how American prejudice and discrimination migrated to Africa with the creation of Liberia.

The author is a marginal man who belongs to all of the groups involved. As an insider, he was privy to confidential racial and cultural viewpoints. As an outsider, his academic training allowed him to apply the principles of sociology and anthropology to what he observed. Although the book is based on academic theory, it is written in an engaging and understandable way that appeals to a mass audience.

Through a variety of anecdotes and vignettes illustrating the persistence of ignorance among people who really know better, the reader will gain insights into the nature of racism and perhaps himself, as well, as he sees his own racial and cultural attitudes displayed.

This account of the social and cultural forces that destroyed Liberia is based on social psychology Â— how people think and act as a group. In every society and nation, while every individual may not exactly fit the mold, there are cultural similarities that lead to groupthink Â— an essential element of national character.

Liberia was doomed from the start. The sins of the master were inevitably passed on to the slave. Since it implied status, the Americo-Liberians blindly followed the worst of whites. Hypocrisy made them what they imputed to the natives. While they rejected the best of African culture, they could only display the trappings of Western culture. Image was all important. But thatÂ’s all it was Â— image. With only a Â“tasteÂ” of Western culture, they imagined the white way...

Liberia was doomed from the start. The sins of the master were inevitably passed on to the slave. Since it implied status, the Americo-Liberians blindly followed the worst of whites. Hypocrisy made them what they imputed to the natives. While they rejected the best of African culture, they could only display the trappings of Western culture. Image was all important. But thatÂ’s all it was Â— image. With only a Â“tasteÂ” of Western culture, they imagined the white way without truly understanding it, which made Liberia a caricature of Southern society.

The son of a Liberian diplomat and a hereditary chief of the Mende tribe, Dennis spent his childhood summers in Liberia, and since the 1950s has lived as a "black man" and worked as an academic in the US. He and his wife Anita, both sociologists and anthropologists, explore why the experiment to repatriate slaves from the US to Africa begun in 1822 has failed, by comparing the prejudice and discrimination in Liberia to patterns he has encountered in the US.

He's Liberian royalty — a Mende chief who moved to the United States in 1950 to go to school, back in the days when he was called a negro. At 79, he's six months younger than Martin Luther King, Jr., with whom he marched.

Dennis went on to earn a double PhD in sociology and anthropology from Michigan State University before retiring to Fort Myers with his wife Anita, in 1992.

They've just published Slaves to Racism: An Unbroken Chain from American to Liberia, which they describe as a historical eyewitness account of the effect of racism in Liberia compared to racism in America.

Over the years, he says, he's seen some changes, byut he's also seen some chronic problems — both here and abroad. "In most cases, blacks have been their own worst enemies," he says.

Here in Fort Myers, he's lived through his share of racism, such as the patrons at Gold's Gym asking him, when they heard someone calling him "Doctor," if he was a witch doctor. "Oh," Dennis says, with a sigh. "I don't mind it. They don't know, you know."

"Racism is a habit we learn from other people. Events such as Black History Month can educate people, give them pride.

We spoke to men and women ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s, asking them a few simple questions: Has Barack Obama's presidency resulted in a different level of dialogue between blacks and whites, so far?...Anita Dennis, the [white] co-author, with her husband of 41 years, of the book Slaves to Racism, noted,

We live in the Villas in Fort Myers, which is becoming more integrated than it used to be...It's too soon to tell if the Obama presidency is having an effect on race for blacks and whites here. We noted a very big change when we came here in 1992 from the northern Midwest. There, we were on university campuses (Mr. Dennis was a professor of sociology.) In Flint, Michigan, our children had black teachers in gifted schools. There were black judges. I led a sheltered life.

Living here, my husband and I had to deal with race questions. For me, being interracially married, it wasn't easy to choose someone to be comfortable with as a friend....We do have a marvelous community within our church. They are our social group, basically. So I've been a housewife and a homemaker.

One thing that struck me during the election of Obama was that everyone said, "I never thought I would like to see this day." Not just black people, but white people said it.

The authors of this volume received their academic training in sociology and anthropology. It is therefore not surprising that Slaves To Racism: An Unbroken Chain From America to Liberia, is admirable not only in its historical precision, but also in the broad socio-anthropological expertise of its authors. Readers will appreciate the memoir style of writing, with its eyewitness accounts of racial tensions in both the U.S. and Liberia, where racism is known as tribalism (or ethnic chauvinism). Reflecting the thematic nuances of Claude Clegg’s Price of Liberty: African Americans And the Making of Liberia (Chapel Hill, 2006), this work reiterates the irony of how U.S.-based freed slaves returned to West Africa, via Liberia, to call themselves Americo- Liberians and dominate the indigenous populace. The introduction provides a vivid comparison of aspects of American and Liberian racism, although the authors acknowledge that “America and Liberia are very different countries on very different continents . . . [, with] different cultures and racial combinations . . . ” (3). They add: “Under the influence of Americo-Liberian oppression and white missionary and business activity, natives were gradually made socially and culturally insecure. To fit into Americo-Liberian society, they had to follow Americo-Liberian ways. . . . [and] essentially replicated the destructive cultural mentalities of the Americo-Liberians” (3–4).

In a well-argued introduction and twelve chapters divided into three parts, Slaves to Racism provides important historical perspectives on several aspects of the life that the Americo-Liberians made for themselves in Liberia. In particular, it relates how, in April 1980, the authors learned via telephone “that President [William R.] Tolbert, of the Americo-Liberian ruling elite, had been assassinated in the Executive Mansion by a group of security guards who were African-Liberians. . . .” (2). Indeed, says Benjamin Dennis, the events of spring 1980 “wiped out my plans to return home [to Liberia]” (2).

The April 1980 anti-Americo-Liberian coup d’etat, spearheaded by Samuel Doe of the Krahn ethnic group, led to a great deal of bloodshed, including the death of two of Benjamin Dennis’s relatives: “Ten days later, in another [phone] call, I heard that African-Liberian soldiers had tied thirteen Americo-Liberian government officials to poles on the beach and machine-gunned them. One was a cousin, Cecil Dennis, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. . . . My uncle C. C. Dennis, a prominent newspaper publisher in Monrovia, had been chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to his death” (2).

The six chapters of part 1 delve into the nature of racism as it is practiced and promoted by Americo-Liberians. In part 2 the authors provide an analysis of the effect of racism on the national character of America, along with its complexities, realities, myths, and hypocrisies. To the authors, notions such as integration, equal opportunity, white Christian benevolence, and assimilation are all mythical phenomena. Part 3 serves as the conclusion, opening with the words of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The greatest sin of our time is not the few who have destroyed, but the vast majority who had sat idly by” (249). It is an apt quotation from the leader who also once described 11:00 a.m. on Sundays as the most segregated hour in America.

While the authors lament the destruction wrought during the civil war by warlords like Charles Taylor and others, the democratically run election in 2005 of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf seems to have given them hope. They draw on the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy to prompt Liberians to serve their country selflessly: “We must ‘ask not what Liberia can do for us, but what we can do for Liberia.’” In their view, nothing will help Liberia until all Liberians “realize that we rise or fall together” (250).

Slaves to Racism: An Unbroken Chain from America to Liberia is an extremely well written book and should be beneficial to teachers, students, and researchers in African studies and also American studies.

Lincoln Journal of Social and Political Thought, Vol. 6 No. 2, Spring 2009 | More »

Lincoln Journal of Social and Political Thought, Vol. 6 No. 2, Spring 2009

From personal experiences in racial dynamics, Professor Dennis not only explains how racism damaged American social and political history but also how Liberia's brand of racism brought destruction to the nation. Whether the two nations have learnt lessons from this experience is a matter of conjecture.

Indeed, Professor Dennis and his wife Anita applied the tools of their academic training in producing this book..., a well-narrated social history and worthy of a place in the historiography of social history. Students of African history as well as American racial history will find this book an excellent compendium.